Link to podcast: Standing Out Amongst the Competition
welcome to dpc pediatrician we’re dr phil boucher and dr marina capella two dpc pediatricians who are on a mission to share our love of direct primary care with you hey everyone welcome back to dpc pediatrician today we’re talking about standing out amongst the competition in the olden days when you were in a
fee-for-service practice people would just they would look at their insurance card they would go into the insurance company’s website they would plug it in see who’s nearest by maybe look at the bio, call the office, say, are you accepting patients with my insurance? Great. I’m your patient. And then that was all. And it was easy, right?
Like you didn’t have to do anything. You would be full. You would be seeing 20, 30 patients per day, working your ass off. And that’s how it worked. Now, In direct primary care, things are a little bit different. One, patients don’t find you when they look on their insurance card and they say, like, who’s in network?
And two is people have to decide, actively decide that, okay, there’s all these people that are on my insurance card. But despite that, I’m going to pick this direct primary care practice because of X, Y, and Z that are really important to me. And I’m going to make that choice
despite the fact that my insurance might cover a different office and I won’t have to pay. And so as direct primary care owners, the impetus on us is really, how are we going to stand out amongst the competition enough that people choose us and we say, pick me, pick me, pick me.
And people do pick us despite the fact that they have other options, despite the fact that those other options are the path of least resistance when it comes to the cost of healthcare and those sorts of things. And so I think this will be an interesting conversation to kind of like talk through, well,
what are the biggest things that we can show that actually make a difference for people to choose us? Because Marina and I have both been in DPC long enough that some of the things that we say and some of the benefits we have, people don’t really care about. Like, it’s not enough to be like, okay…
I mean, it’s like buying a new car. Like, okay, yeah, it comes in a better color, but like the color isn’t so bad. Or like the speaker system in the car, it could be better, but it’s like not something that I’m going to run to the dealership and take a
bunch of time and spend a bunch of money on. What are those actual things that help us to stand out amongst the competition that keep people coming into our office, learning about what we offer, signing up, and then sticking with us? So I guess, Marina, I’m going to put you on the spot and say,
what are the things that patients tell you for why they chose you and why they stick with you?
I’d say the majority of the patients that come to see me, they’re looking for something beyond what they’ve experienced at their local general pediatrician. Either they’ve been frustrated that their child has a problem and they don’t feel like the physician is really listening to them or getting to the root cause of the problem,
or they have the standard medical approach is just throw antibiotics or throw like steroid creams at everything. Right. They want something different. They want something that really incorporates a more holistic approach, diet and supplements and the microbiome and mental health, all of that stuff. They kind of want to look at the bigger picture and again,
get at the root causes, take a more, not always purely natural approach, but just an approach that is either more natural or it combines the best of more traditional natural healing modalities with the best of modern medicine. And that’s how I advertise myself as integrative. It’s like, Hey,
I take the best of modern medicine and combine it with these beautiful traditional healing modalities that we’ve had for years. hundreds and thousands of years right so i would say that that’s what really distinguishes me and the messaging that i try to convey via my website and via my
some of my social media posts as well as that i am integrative more holistic take the time to listen take the time to get to root causes and incorporate these cool other modalities like mind body medicine herbalism that most physicians nowadays don’t really feel comfortable with and so that has really
helped me to stand out among the competition i would say that When I first opened my DPC, I didn’t really understand this concept, which is why we’re talking about it today. I had kind of taken the traditional direct primary care. I got to just advertise direct primary care.
I got to advertise like this is like a different model and why it’s better than the other model. But it wasn’t really viewing my patient’s problems from their perspective. It was like… I don’t know, it was a very bland explanation of what I offer. And it wasn’t helping me to stand out. It was like, well,
It’s a pediatrician and yeah, there’s a different payment model. I pay cash, but why would I pay cash if I can get the exact same service? I can get my well child exams and I could get my sick visits and I could get my questions answered from my general pediatrician.
And so that’s where this topic really becomes important is that we are not just the standard community insurance based general pediatrician. In order for people to be willing to shell out money for our services, we have to present ourselves as the Mercedes Benz and not the Toyota.
Because we have to present ourselves as something that is different than the standard Mercedes. they have been experiencing before and i’m taking an economics class and we’re talking about this concept of consumer surplus and so that’s really what made me think about this is when you go to the grocery store and you see like different
jugs of milk and plastic And then you see a pint of milk in glass or a pint of milk in a fancy glass bottle that’s a flavored milk. Like that’s different than all your plastic milk jugs. Right. And so that company learned how to take advantage of this idea of consumer surplus
by like putting itself at a totally different tier from the average milk jug. Right.
Literally on a different shelf, right?
Yeah. And therefore getting its customers to be willing to pay more.
Yeah.
That’s my thought.
That’s a great analogy because we do, most communities have a surplus of pediatric opportunity options. Like you don’t have to have a specific sort of offering that is wildly different in order to fill up in a fee for service practice. Like you just have to be available and within driving distance and taking the
insurance and eventually like you’ll get enough patients there. I think the two things that I was hearing from what you said are you have to be better. And you have to be different. And I think those appeal to two different sets of patients that are looking for things.
The better is you don’t have to wait on hold forever. You don’t have to wait like three days to get in with your doctor. There’s going to be fewer hassles. Like those are the better things where people are like, that would be nice. That would be nice if I could book my appointment online.
That would be nice if I could text message my doctor. Like that’s a little bit in the different category too. But I think to some degree, it’s like, okay, how much better can communication be? Well, it can be a lot better. There are only so many ways that you can like be available to patients that is better.
And so better can take you some of the distance, whether it’s just the ease of being able to get in, the ease of communicating with the team. But then I think one of the things that really makes DPCs thrive and grow fastest is when you’re different because it’s a whole different thing. It’s not just like, okay,
this is just a different plastic bottle or this one fits in my fridge a little bit better to stick with the milk jug analogy. Like this one is a totally different experience because I, as the chooser of my child’s pediatric care, want something completely different. And when you start to stand out for doing things different,
that’s when you really start to thrive and stand out amongst the competition because then it’s not like price shopping. You’re not comparing, well, this jug of milk is $3.79 and this one is $3.98 and this one is from nearby and maybe it’s better. This glass jug is actually $5.98. but it’s a glass jug.
And that’s something that I’m specifically looking for. And so that allows you then to not have to be the Mercedes all the time because you can’t always be the Mercedes and the Mercedes doesn’t scale because it’s too expensive and it’s too costly to be 24 seven.
I will drop everything I do to go take care of this patient. I’m out to dinner with my family, but they scraped their knees. So I’m going to run over their house and apply a bandaid. Like, That can’t scale unless you don’t need it to scale because they’re paying you
umpteen thousand dollars per year for the service and those sorts of things. But what that allows you to do when you focus on the different is to stand out without having to be better in every capacity. Does that make sense? Yeah.
Yeah. And when I say Mercedes, I don’t know that you have to be just, I like your points because not every pediatrician or DPC physician wants to be at the beck and call of their, every patient, right? You have to charge a really high price point and some people do, and that’s completely up to them.
I have a good friend who does that. She, she, went, drove an hour away to see her patient’s kid get stitches at the ER because that mom really needed support. And I was like, I would never do that, but you’re charging way more than I’m charging. So you go do that, right?
So you don’t necessarily have to be that Mercedes to feel like the Mercedes in the mind of your patients and so i guess that’s what i’m getting at is the psychology of it that you have to really work hard to communicate the excellent value and the
amazingness of the service that you offer compared to the average pediatrician in your community right and so getting comfortable just talking about it right talk about it on your website don’t just talk about the the services you offer on the website, please. That’s something I learned from probably the biggest takeaway I took from one of my
marketing courses a few months ago was that people buy benefits, not features. And this just stuck with me. So what do I mean by that? Benefits is that people want a relationship with their child’s doctor. That relationship is valued so much. They don’t care about your hours as much as they care about the relationship, right?
They want to feel a certain way. They want to feel listened to. That is a benefit. The relationship, the feeling listened to the, I don’t know what are some other benefits, but you can see how if I just on my website listed my prices and then listed the
These are my hours and these are the procedures that I do. And this is how much time the appointments are and things like that. Well, those are features, but they’re not communicating the emotional component of that to your client. They’re not saying, hey, this is a relationship and this is a long-term relationship and this is trust and
this is communication and this is listening. And this is all of those emotional things that people want underneath. features, the reason why they really care and why they’re willing to shell out money is those really often more of those emotional relational benefits as opposed to the specific features.
Yeah, the features are useless when you don’t look at what it is that the features provide for. We do text messaging, but it’s not like nobody cares that we do text messaging over Spruce or the very specific nuanced facets of it. What they care about is that
They don’t have to call and wait on hold and speak to 17 different people to find out what to do about their kids’ allergies. The text messaging is the vehicle for ease of contact and to reduce the anxiety of not feeling heard. And so that’s kind of the benefit that text messages offer.
The feature of online appointment scheduling, nobody is going to join your practice because they can book online. But what it does check their mental box of is, oh, I don’t have to call and wait on hold and pray that I can get in. I can just go to their website and book appointments.
So the benefit really of that is the peace of mind that comes from knowing that. that i can get an appointment with my doctor without having to go through a huge hassle like those are the things that you really want to speak to to stand out to
the competition because at the end of the day like they come in and i look in their ears and i talk to them about their eating and those sorts of things those are all things that they expect and that they know they’re going to get from anyone so the
real benefits to them is that we know your child we have the time We make it as easy and hassle free as possible. And it’s more budget friendly. And I could change those into just the features of like monthly membership fee, or you can pay with your HSA or whatever it might be,
but that’s not as it doesn’t pull at the heartstrings and make people decide to get off the couch and actually come in for a visit as you won’t have to worry about all those co-pays and not knowing what your bill is going to be like focusing then
like you said, on the benefits rather than the features is really one of the ways to stand out. And then I think to your point, the other way to stand out is to do things that other people don’t do. So whether it’s simply taking longer to have visits, saying that our visits are as long as it takes,
there’s no rush, or having special things that you do that you’ve been trained to do or have a special interest or passion for that others don’t do. That allows you to stand out without doing anything. extra work like if you’re the only one in town that does integrative approach or
you’re the only one that sees pandas patients or whatever it might be then that allows you to stand out from the competition without having to go above and beyond and walk them through how to apply a band-aid to a boo-boo those sorts of things
that that you’re able to stand out from the competition without having to have the white glove gold touch to every encounter
Yeah. And then there’s just one final point. Telling stories is an important part of highlighting those benefits over features and standing out because I think you’re really good, Phil, like in your reels, you’ll tell the story. Oh, mom texted me the other day. And then like, you’ll just tell that story.
It’s not just saying, hey, I offer texting, right? That’s a feature. It’s the benefit. It’s the emotional value behind that text messaging and how it brought peace of mind to this mom who was worried about her kid in the morning and got a quick text message response to her inquiry. So yeah,
do that through testimonials on your website, on your Google reviews, on social media, share those stories because that’s how you really appeal to that underlying psychological need for benefits instead of features. And I think DPC is a fantastic vehicle for doing things differently. Whatever your passion within pediatrics or medicine is,
this is a beautiful way to pursue it and to stand out as well.
now before you all go i’ve got one thing to say you need to go to your website just go into your website and look for one feature And change that into a benefit. Go in, change your website so that you’ve taken one feature that’s on your website and turned it into a benefit.
And if you get stuck and you say, I have no idea, I can’t figure it out. Just say, hey, ChatGPT, look at my website, plug in your, write your website in. It will go look at your website and say, help me convert the features to benefits and then go and do what ChatGPT says. Like it’s that easy.
I love it. to shift and then it will inspire you to think of other ways that you can really quickly change your conversations when people come in when there’s meet and greets when you’re at the mall and somebody’s asking you about your practice or something
like that you can talk about those benefits rather than the features so much easier
yeah thanks for that that little call to action phil thanks everyone for listening and we look forward to catching you next time take care
